Temple of the Dog reunite for first tour

Submitted

Special
25th anniversary reissue collection to be released by UMe on Sept. 30

Temple of the Dog - the Seattle supergroup featuring
Soundgarden's Chris Cornell, Pearl Jam's Jeff Ament, Stone Gossard, and Mike
McCready, and drummer Matt Cameron (who plays drums with both Soundgarden and
Pearl Jam) - has reunited and will tour for the first time ever since forming
in 1990. The band will play five cities in November: Philadelphia, New York,
San Francisco, Los Angeles and Seattle. A special ticket pre-sale for fans
signed up to the Ten Club, Soundgarden and Chris Cornell email lists begins
immediately and runs through July 27. Tickets will go on sale to the general
public at noon local time on Friday, July 29. $1.50 from each ticket sold will
benefit the Chris and Vicky Cornell Foundation, while an additional $1.50 will
benefit Pearl Jam's Vitalogy Foundation.

The tour marks the 25th anniversary of the release
of Temple of the Dog's first and only album, a self-titled set that was released
by A&M Records on April 16, 1991.

"We wanted to do the one thing we never got to
do ... play shows and see what it feels like to be the band that we walked away
from 25 years ago," Cornell said of the 2016 tour.

On Sept. 30, UMe will release a special Temple of
the Dog 25th anniversary reissue collection of their landmark album, newly
mixed by Brendan O'Brien. The collection will be available in four configurations,
including a four-disc super deluxe, a double LP, a two-CD deluxe, and a single
CD. Physical pre-orders are available today along with a detailed list of the
contents of each configuration HERE.

Temple of the Dog came together from the ashes
of Mother Love Bone following the death from a drug overdose of its
frontman Andrew Wood, Cornell's close friend and roommate. Cornell wrote
future TOTD songs "Say Hello 2 Heaven" and "Reach
Down" to help process his grief, "but the songs didn't have any
destination," he said. "I was compelled to write them and there they
were - written in a vacuum as a tribute to Andy. My thought was that maybe I
could record these songs with the remaining members of Mother Love Bone and
that maybe we could release them as a tribute."

Mother Love Bone's Gossard and Ament began playing
with McCready, and they brought in Soundgarden's Cameron to drum on demos.
Because this was a collaboration, and a tribute, there was no commercial
expectation for the Temple of the Dog album. It would be, Gossard would later
observe, "the easiest and most beautiful record that we've ever been
involved with."

Cornell said, "Temple was about making an album
simply for the joy of doing it. We weren't concerned what anyone outside of our
group of friends would think of it. It was the first and maybe only stress-free
album that we all made."

Gossard, Ament and McCready were also simultaneously
forming a new band, which more than six months later would be known
as Pearl Jam. A singer from San Diego named Eddie Vedder, who was
vying to lead the project, came into the studio to sing background vocals on
three of the Temple songs. When Cornell thought another song, "Hunger
Strike," needed a duet, Vedder was enlisted. "Hunger Strike"
became a hit single, peaking at No. 4 on Billboard's mainstream rock
tracks chart.

Temple of the Dog performed live only a handful of
times, most notably in Seattle, in November and December of 1990. Those
shows have become some of the most legendary Seattle concerts of all-time.
Their 2016 shows mark the first time the band has ever toured. (Cornell joined
Pearl Jam in 2014 at the Bridge School show and for two nights at PJ20 in
Alpine Valley, Wisconsin, and the Temple lineup played "Reach Down"
and "Call Me a Dog" at Seattle's Benaroya Hall in January 2015.)

"This is something no one has ever seen,"
Cornell said of the official reunion. "We wanted to stop and recognize
that we did this and pay homage."